Swallowing the Jagged Red Pill: Transcending the Matrix

The rabbit hole is a long, twisted tunnel through the red and blue guts of God. But it also weaves a labyrinth through the human heart that not even God can track.

Indeed, the Rabbit hole, like the red pill, doesn’t lead us into Wonderland –it leads us out of it. With this spirit of adventure, please allow me to take you on a journey out of the matrix of Plato’s Cave (codependence), into the cocoon (independence), and into the Cosmic Commune (interdependence).

It will be a bumpy ride, but just as the pain gained from wisdom is infinitely more rewarding than the bliss gained from ignorance, it will be worth it. Let the journey begin.

The Cave

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” ~ Plato

Imagine the Matrix combined with Plato’s Cave. We were all born into this cave. None of us had a choice.

This cave is a prison for un-individuated egos and un-actualized souls who stick together out of blind faith based upon fear and paranoia.

Some prisoners hang around each other more than others and inadvertently form gangs (tribes, nations, religions), which they become devoted to, also out of fear and paranoia.

This represents the majority of people. Most people are prisoners to both the prison of the cave and to the peer pressure of their particular gang.

And most people never escape this prison/matrix/cave. They remain in a state of paranoia and fear their entire lives. It’s an all too common tragedy. But escape is possible, albeit improbable.

The cave is a symbol, like the matrix, for the unhealthy dependency on an ignorant social system. It is a meta-symbol for slavery, imprisonment and codependence based upon fear.

In the grand scheme of things it shouldn’t even qualify as a legitimate matrix, as it is just a shadow of a shadow, an abstraction of an abstraction, the ghost of a ghost in a machine. It’s actually a pseudo matrix constructed by the anxiety of the immature ego and the insecurity of the uninitiated soul.

But it’s a force to be reckoned with, and so it is a force that must be faced. It just so happens that the only way out of the matrix of the cave is to embrace the very thing that’s keeping us there: fear. Facing our fear is the first act of courage.

The second act of courage is a leap of faith. Ironic, isn’t it? By embracing our fear and transforming our blind faith into a leap of faith, we are suddenly free. But freedom does not come without great cost. Bring on the pain of existential transformation!

The Cocoon

“Only to the extent that we can expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.” ~ Pema Chodron

Although we were all born into the cave/matrix, none of us has to remain there. We can leave, we can take the leap of faith, but the way out is incredibly painful.

In fact, the only way out is through an immense amount of suffering. There is much existential anguish (mind, body, and soul) involved. Imagine leaving the cave of your comfort.

Imagine everything you thought was true and just in the world collapsing all around you. Imagine your mental paradigm of right and wrong melting into a puddle of liquefied yin-yang smeared out into a sticky, thick-like-molasses, uncouth gray that you’re suddenly drowning in. Imagine being so excruciatingly alone that your soul curls up into a ball and weeps existential blood.

Imagine the box you used to think inside of shredded into an infinite amount of pieces flung like shattered glass in your heart. Imagine your comfort zone stretched so far that it snaps back and cuts your soul in half and neither half knows how to get back together with the other half.

Imagine these scenarios and then know –balls to bones, ovaries to marrow– that it is infinitely worse than any combination of poetic words can portray. Now hang your head over the abyss of the human condition and cry the last tears of your innocence. Welcome to the Cocoon. Welcome to the Desert of the Real.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. It only seems that way inside the self-destructing guts of the cocoon. The cocoon is the annihilation of the self, the complete destruction of what you once were, but inside this destruction is formed the seed of individuation and self-actualization. In fact, the heat from this self-annihilation is precisely what the seed needs in order to flourish.

It is only by shredding apart the ego that we can use the leftover fabric to sew the Ropes to God, to build the Ladder to Cosmic Mind, and to experience a glorious rebirth. It is the evisceration of innocence from which true courage is born.

And when everything is pieced back together again, a new self emerges, a self that transcends independence and is launched into interdependence, a butterfly self that learns how to connect itself to the cosmos. Like Aldous Huxley said, “Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what man does with what happens to him.”

The Cosmic Commune

“Wherever you stand, be the soul of that place.” ~ Rumi

Imagine the new you, standing prominent atop a high hill. And joy of joys! There are others like you, although you are few. You look back at the cave and reflect upon your experiences. You now understand the truth. You see how everything is connected.

Your life is full of meaning precisely because of this interconnectedness. But you cannot help but think about all those tortured souls left behind, nervous and trembling against the unknown, drowning in their own ignorance and blinded by their own fear, huddled against each other and clinging to their gangs, their tribes, their nations.

You have a sudden existential longing to disconnect these people from the matrix of the cave and reconnect them to the greater interdependent matrix of the cosmos. But how do you do it? How do you get people to see what they refuse to see? How do you wake up people who are pretending to be asleep?

I mean, there will be people who will try to kill you simply because you dared to come back and challenge their ignorance. There will be the leaders of groups, tribes, and nations who will defend the illusory power they have amassed within the matrix of the cave, and they will use that false power to prevent the truth from ever being told because it could bring everything they hold dear crashing down to the ground. There will be people so addicted to comfort and so dependent upon the false system of the matrix that they will fight tooth and nail to remain comfortably numb and blissfully ignorant.

There will be the false laws of men that will contradict the true laws of the universe, and these false laws could be used to imprison you, to re-enslave you, to even kill you. How do you go about informing people who are determined to suffer unnecessarily that they will have to go through a lot worse suffering in order to become free? Quite the pickle indeed.

It’s time to mount the provident horse of the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse. In short, it’s time to ninjaneer the Matrix. It’s time to become The One, whether anybody else has the capacity to become the one or not. The world is a crashing plane. The oxygen masks have been released. The cabin pressure is decreasing. What are you going to do? What are you going to do?!

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Gary 'Z' McGee, a former Navy Intelligence Specialist turned philosopher, is the author of Birthday Suit of God and The Looking Glass Man. His works are inspired by the great philosophers of the ages and his wide awake view of the modern world.